“Don’t bother calling anyone. He looks fine now.” Sylvia rocked Nicky, her movements solid, her grip tight.
“But you didn’t see him. He was rolling on the floor. He was out of control.”
“What happened? Why was he doing that? Was it a game?” Sylvia’s smile was the kind that made me feel like I had no idea what I was talking about. I doubted what I’d seen and felt worse for having caused it. If something was wrong with Nicky, we wouldn’t know because Sylvia didn’t think he needed to go to the hospital. My chest got all hard as if I’d swallowed a big piece of meat. I had put Nicky’s life in danger. Then I’d laughed at him. What was wrong with me that I could do such things to my brother? I’d locked him in the closet because I thought it was fun. It was fun when he didn’t get sick. In the dim hallway my mother’s eyes were vacant hollows boring into me with full knowledge of my games, of my evil ways, and the scary thing was that those eyes didn’t care one bit.
Nicky blinked as if he was coming out of a long, much-needed afternoon nap. Later he said he remembered nothing about the closet and was conscious only of a light bruise on the crown of his head. Nothing similar ever happened to him again. He shook his head and seemed surprised to be in our mother’s arms. His eyes held a hatred so clean I could mistake it for love. Nothing I did would taint it; he could survive anything.
Sylvia released him. He sat back against the closet door, mouth closed. Sylvia stood up, arms trembling.
“I don’t know what to do with you two,” she said. “You are wild. I wouldn’t be shocked if you killed each other one day, if you don’t kill me first.” She walked past me and went back downstairs.
I couldn’t look at Nicky or even speak. But I didn’t want to leave him. What if he had another fit? Then for sure I would call the fire department even if Sylvia told me not to. I would run down the street myself and pull the alarm. Nobody would get in the way now of me protecting my brother even though I was as aware as he was that the opportunity to protect him was over. He had grown past me and was strong in a way I had never expected, a way that magnified my own weakness: my meanness.
I asked him if he wanted to sit in the garage loft to watch the storm. The sky was near black so it was time.
Nicky didn’t resist. Normally he avoided the storms, huddling in his room with his Lego bricks or a stack of comic books while the sky cracked open. Now, as low rumbles came across the fields, Nicky jumped up as if he craved the storm. I craved it too. Nothing was more important now than to be outside with Nicky, our faces against the air while the storm whirled around us.
On the final day of the thunderstorms, I woke early, my skin cool. Outside was silent. I got up and moved as if through heavy air, my hands relying on the walls and furniture edges, all of my senses cottoned up. I walked down the stairs, fingertips on the clock wallpaper, instinctively stepping as close to the inside as possible to avoid creaks. At the bottom I paused, my hand on the newel post, and listened to my father’s snores warble through the half-open bedroom door. I checked the living room couch out of habit and was glad to see Sylvia not there. A few more steps, through the kitchen and the mud room, and I was in the back yard.
Outside, I folded myself into a chaise longue under the pear tree, the morning heat already enough to warm me, and gazed past the house. The slightest curve of sun was rising. Behind a pink film of clouds peered the concrete sky I’d grown used to all week, but the sun was there now and that was all I needed to know.
I fell asleep and dreamed and woke with my mouth hanging open, a clear stream of drool joining my lip to my red nightie. I was unsure where I was.
The chaise longue creaked as I got up, and an earwig skittered across the canvas. I walked through the long grass in the back yard and down the hill into the town in the sunshine, past all the familiar houses, cutting through the fallen branches along Mrs. Brant’s stream, over the tracks, past Hoppy’s Wrecking Yard and across the road to the ballpark. The park was full of activity: a fair with livestock and rides by the river and a baseball tournament. Sam was playing and so was Sylvia, who stood in right field wearing an oversized catcher’s mitt. I wanted to be in the game but I couldn’t make myself go over.
Instead, I headed toward the Stevens’ house. Their front door was open, so I entered, passing through Mrs. Stevens’ dining room with its rows of plates along the tops of the walls, into the long, skinny kitchen and out through the back yard where the Stevens were having a family party. They glanced up without acknowledging me. I continued until their voices and the umpire’s shouts and the Ferris wheel music had faded into a low insect hum and I was in the grass alone. The field grass was much shorter now. It gleamed deep emerald. All sound disappeared. I heard only a roar like the inner folds of a conch shell pressed to my ear.
When I looked up, I was in a graveyard. I could see no houses or people in any direction, even though the Stevens’ house wasn’t that far behind me and the river was somewhere up ahead.
I looked around again. The field had filled with intricate bushes: lilacs, wild rose, sumac, honeysuckle, peony — and wilder things too: nettles, thistles, milkweed, golden rod, burdock. The field invited me to explore, to crawl between the branches on the dirt and grass floor. The bushes parted and receded as I made my way between the slim gravestones, many of which had upheaved themselves, exposing raw earth. The ground was spongy, lumpy. Water seeped into the edges of my footprints. The gravestones wore such mottled faces that even when I wet my fingers and rubbed the surface of the engraved letters I couldn’t read the names of the buried. A secret wanted to reveal itself but no matter how deeply I went into the graveyard, I was unable to expose it.
I squatted and discovered pieces of blue and green glass and washed white china, the edges rubbed smooth as though by water. I folded my fingers over them, their sleekness calming me, flowing into my body. I had never heard of this cemetery before: to the best of my knowledge, Apple Ford had no burial sites for its citizens. I must have been the only one who knew about it. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed a graveyard before.
Seconds later I was awake, really awake in the chaise longue, my skin gummy. I knew now what to do with the lightning wood. I would fashion a man from it and when the storms were over I would walk through town, find the graveyard and bury him there. This man would be my charm against Sylvia. Only his burial would protect me.
It happened in the kitchen the day after the storms broke, the sky a blue so bright it ached to look at it.
I woke to the crunch of gravel. Through the maple leaves outside my window, I saw the corner of the green Impala as Sam turned south out of the driveway. The house was silent. Outside was a cacophony: birds, squirrels, shrieks of children, cars, chainsaws, lawnmowers, hoses. It wouldn’t thunder that day. Sylvia was sitting in the kitchen. I could tell it in my bones. I could almost smell the smoke sidling under my door, coming for me.
The storms had been a buffer against Sylvia all week. Now the skies were clear and there was nothing to protect me from my mother’s rawness. Sylvia’s presence, the force of her will, urged me to come downstairs to see for myself that all was clear, that the storms had made my mother fine if only I would see for myself. If I went down though it wouldn’t be alright; it would be worse than ever. There was nothing I could say to my mother. The words sank into me, building on the mountain of hurt. The more Sylvia tried to make things look alright, the more obvious it became that they weren’t.
Instead I sat on my bed. Sylvia no longer cared when I woke up — or if she even saw me all day. I’d swiped Sam’s Swiss Army knife and I whittled and shaped the wood I’d collected with the spear blade and nail file. I glued white circles with numbers inside them on the sides, the brown mucilage coming from a bottle with a red rubber top. The end result would be a man. It would be big and it would have some charm. If I worked hard and fast enough, it might alter what was fermenting downstairs.
By the time the sky had darkened